“Touched a nerve, have we?” Marco said with a snort of laughter. “Bring him to common grounds. Lennier will need to meet him.”
Marco nodded to Yann before disappearing behind the carriage.
“And keep your human girl off my bridge,” Yann said before following Marco. “If she’d been killed on it, I would have suffered an angel’s burn. I happen to like my scales the way they are, even if they become crusted with stone.”
Luc watched him as he walked away. So Yann was slipping into hibernation, then. His bridge had been closed for quite a while. Marco, too, had gone nearly seven months without anyone to protect. If his humans didn’t arrive soon, he might descend into hibernation as well. The idea was enough to make Luc grin.
He straightened his spine as the doors to the restaurant opened and the Waverlys emerged. Other carriages packed the curb outside the restaurant, so Ingrid and the others weaved through and began to cross the street to their own carriage. Luc hopped down from the driver’s seat, and his boots landed in an ankle-deep puddle of slush. Magnificent.
He saw Ingrid first, her hat’s burgundy veil drawn down to her chin. He could see through it, though, and she was clearly biting back a laugh. Her lips struggled to remain level as Luc remained rooted in that cold puddle. Those lips, he knew, were like silk. Soft as the petals of a rose. Her pale hair a sheet of satin. He remembered running his fingers through the strands. Pulling her closer against him.
Ingrid’s wavering grin flattened out, her eyes turning dark and serious. As if she knew what he was thinking of. Was he so transparent?
He cast his eyes down to his soaked boots, but a shrill cry of alarm brought his attention back up. Each one of his humans, crossing to the carriage in a staggered line, had come to a reeling stop, eyes wide as they looked down the boulevard. Luc heard the clapping of shod hooves on the pavement. A horse and rider barreled down the center of the street, cutting a manic path between carriages and bicycles—and heading straight for his humans.
“Ingrid!” Gabby screamed from where she stood, close to their landau, and Ingrid’s only thought was that at least her sister was safely out of harm’s way.
Mama’s scream came from behind her, along with her father’s absurd warning to look out! But Ingrid’s feet refused to move. In her peripheral vision, she saw Luc running toward her, but even if he’d traded skin for scales, he wouldn’t have reached her before the horse cut her down.
Something solid slammed into her from behind, pitching her forward and onto the wet pavement just as the horse’s muscular legs streaked by.
“Goddamn it!” her brother—and rescuer—shouted. Grayson rolled onto his back and leaped up, chasing after the horse and rider while hurling profanities.
Having reached her, Luc lifted Ingrid from the boulevard, his hands squeezing her shoulders, his voice shaking. “Are you hurt?”
She didn’t answer. The rider had stopped farther down the road and turned back, as if to view the destruction he’d left in his wake. His blond hair was radiant in the bath of a streetlamp. He wore no hat to cast shadows over his face, so Ingrid could see him well. She knew that face.
She’d fallen in love with it once.
“Jonathan,” she whispered, tugging her shoulders free from Luc’s grip. “Jonathan?”
He looked back at her, belting out wild laughter. With Grayson closing in on the horse, Jonathan’s laughter cut off. He merely grinned. It was the same cold smile Anna had given her before, in the profane cemetery plot.
He drew up the reins and whirled around, charging off before Grayson could reach him.
Gabby and Mama converged on her then, pushing Luc out of the way.
“Are you bleeding?” her mother asked as her father bellowed for them to get out of the street before someone else ran them over.
“Oh, your dress!” Gabby exclaimed, plucking at Ingrid’s top skirt, wet and torn from the slide along the pavement.
“I’m—” Ingrid began, but couldn’t finish. She wasn’t fine. She wasn’t fine at all.
“My God, that madman looked like Jonathan, didn’t he?” Gabby said as she helped Ingrid straighten her hat.
“Don’t be absurd, Gabriella,” their mother said, breathless. “It couldn’t have been Mr. Walker.”
Mama was right. It was absurd. Even though the rider had looked identical to Jonathan, it couldn’t have been him. What would he be doing in Paris, let alone trying to run Ingrid down in the street?
“Into the carriage!” their father ordered, herding them all out of the center of the road and toward the curb. There were people enough staring at them from the pavement, some having pulled carriages to complete halts in order to look on.
“We shouldn’t be made to cross a filthy, dangerous street, boy!” he railed at Luc.
Luc ignored him, though, his attention solely on Ingrid. He peered at her the same way he had before, right after Ingrid had thought she’d seen Anna in the cemetery. She didn’t know what was happening, but she was willing to bet her dowry that Luc did.
CHAPTER EIGHT